Zastrix wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

The problem isnt hard mode, its the rewards stuck Behind hard mode.

If skins like dro m athra were vet only reward 90% of players wouldn't care at all about hard mode.
Same applies to skins like the one from scalecaller peak, beast personality etc

Dro-m'athra skin is just vet, now if you meant that other skins worked that way... they mostly do? Only a few skins have hardmode behind then and I don't see a problem? [snip]

I'll add that at the time of vMoL's release, the veteran version (not even HM) was extremely difficult. Similar story for vHoF, veteran was a real challenge and vet HM was not much more difficult. After that they started making the veteran option much easier and more accessible (vAS+0 through vDSR) while keeping only the hard modes challenging. There was a brief time where vet trials were considered too easy to reward skins (Asylum and Cloudrest), but soon after this the devs decided to allow the skins easily and give additional rewards to hard modes and trifectas (like the Sunspire Senche mount).

I think all of this has been moving in the right direction, and overall is in a pretty good spot now.

[edited to remove quote]

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Ghaleb wrote: »

sinnereso wrote: »

a 20% loss in dps is fine.. tbh thats still 300% or more of what we had in the beginning. theyre need to drop it another 30% imo and remove battle spirit... then tweak vet dungeons and trials etc.. done

I slowly feel like Groundhog Day here…

Yes, today there is a lot way more DPS in the game than in the beginning. But you also didn’t have trials vDSR or vRG, where today’s DPS is required.

Your argument sounds like an odd thing my mother always said that a loaf of bread only cost 15 cents in the past…

Her’s was misleading and not considering development. Your’s is neither.

You did not have things like 8 second wipe mechanics a few years ago like vrg metors. You didn't have massive dps checks and you didn't have adds like bannermen that one shot your group unless you kill them quickly. When hm craglorn trials were the hardest content in the game that dps level was acceptable. That just isn't the reality anymore because content was created around what was possible at the time it was introduced. 50k was bomb a few years ago. If a group went into vrg now with everyone doing 50k it would be a 5hr shlog even if they could clear... And that's a big if.

Folks are thinking if we keep nerfing dps suddenly end game prog groups will take everyone. That's just a fantasy. You will just need to work harder, parse more, know mechs better and be closer to the tippy top of the meta.

was the period where 50k considered extremely good from before they had the trial dummy? because 40-50k on a 6 mil is still considered "god tier" dps, but its the equivalent of 100-120k on the trial dummy

thats why i usually prefer testing on the 3 mil dummy, or on WBs to get my numbers during a realistic scenario, if you can hit 30-45k on a WB solo, then you can sure hit harder when in a group running additional buffs/debuffs

It's adjusted for the trial dummy. So 25-30k on 6m.

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

The problem isnt hard mode, its the rewards stuck Behind hard mode.

If skins like dro m athra were vet only reward 90% of players wouldn't care at all about hard mode.
Same applies to skins like the one from scalecaller peak, beast personality etc

Question: why wouldn't you have great rewards that people actually want behind achievements? I mean it makes sense. Work really hard to accomplish something, get a special reward. That's generally how life works. I'm confused.

I feel like it also depends on the type of reward. Yes, hard things should get rewards, but what shouldn't happen is something useful for an unrelated group gets locked behind something difficult.

Case in point: it's wholly appropriate to give an Olympic Gold Medal to the person who performs the best in a gymnastics routine. It is not exactly appropriate to say the reward for doing the best gymnastics routine is that you get an Oscar for it. Consider the other way around - "you can only get an Olympic Gold for doing an Olympic sport!" makes sense, while "you can only get an acting award by doing an Olympic sport!" makes less sense. Meryl Streep would be disappointed.

Yes, that's an exaggeration, but my point is that the reward should match the thing you're doing. I very much disliked giving personalities (which are incredibly useful to RPers or storytellers) as rewards for hard content. Also the fact that a simple boat furnishing (one of the few boats in the game) was locked behind a vet trial. Yes, there are many storytellers and housing enthusiasts who are endgame ready, but that's not a general rule. There are a lot of storytellers and furnishers that are not capable of harder content, and for many of them it's not simply a 'git gud.' There are reasons to get those things that don't involve showing off accomplishments (and/or flexing on the noobs). To try to say something like "you can't RP the way your character should because you personally suck at the game" just reeks of elitism.

What were appropriate rewards were skins related to the dungeon in question. They were really not seen anywhere else in game, and related perfectly to the story. Those are also specific to the people who want to wear them to show off - very few people would want to wear a vCR+3 skin for reasons other than saying "wow this is cool because it's rare" or "wow, this is cool because I did vCR+3."

So as much as I like personalities and would love to see more in game, I think those should stay in the crown store and away from hard content. Bye by all means all of those skins in the crates should go to the hardmodes instead.

Marto wrote: »

In scenarios like end-game PVE, where you are standing relatively skill and casting skills many times on static targets, Jabs/Sweeps is virtually the same as before. You damage is fairly similar, and the healing from sweeps is reduced by 25%. The only change there is the burning light nerf (which is a different topic)

Tell me you don't end game PVE without telling me you don't end game PVE.

Granted, I quit before AwA went live so haven't personally done the latest trial or dungeons but end game trials haven't had purely static fights in quite awhile. Same with vet-HM dungeons; there's a quite a bit of mechanics that require mobility so if you're playing a melee range templar using jabs, you're doing a fair amount of movement. You certainly aren't just standing still spamming jabs on a static target from start to finish.

I wouldn't qualify for any sort of hard mode. I am simply too old and don't have the manual dexterity let alone the driving ambition.

But I don't begrudge them their place in game until it affects me as a mid level player.

If all the changes coming are to deal with Vet hard mode , surely there can be a better way than to nerf everything across the board.

I love being a Templar and will never change.

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I wouldn't qualify for any sort of hard mode. I am simply too old and don't have the manual dexterity let alone the driving ambition.

But I don't begrudge them their place in game until it affects me as a mid level player.

If all the changes coming are to deal with Vet hard mode , surely there can be a better way than to nerf everything across the board.

I love being a Templar and will never change.

Night blade forever. I agree though and I really think there should have been a more sizable nerf for vdsr and vrg compared to other trials. It started with way higher dose checks then other trials by virtue of them being released when dps was at it's highest point.

I would go further and say that nerfs across the board should be at least equivalent to the DPS nerfs. Why should players who go to a trial or dungeon in update 35 suddenly find it harder than people with exactly the same characters a day earlier.

I agree that nerfing VRG and VDSR should go slightly more than that, due to the extremely low completion rates, espcially on the hard modes

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I don't see an issue with the difficulty really. Vet Hard Mode is for top teams and players and this is fine. The problem is that most top only will run it if 'everyone knows the mechanics' even 1 death can result in kicks or disbands. As such, it is very difficult for new players to actually attempt it, without finding others who want to try it for the first time.

But then this leads into the second issue, most new players only want to run it with those that have the patience to teach them. On the offhand it does happen any mistake will result in that new player getting kicked, this even happens if that player is not responsible. The times I have seen players including myself get removed all because one of the top players made a mistake but rather own up to it, just lied and blamed the new guy.

This creates a catch 22 scenario where top end players won't run it with new players, but new players will only run it with top players. Add on the impatience of mistakes and the lying by and dishonesty of mistakes and this results in a situation where only 2% of the player base actually get it done.

I still haven't done any of the vet hard mode stuff outside of the solo arenas, and it's usually because if anything goes wrong its an immediate kick or disband even if the mistake is made by another, including but not limited, to the host.

I think guilds are a good solution to this. They are the perfect place to organize players together. The game could incentivize guilds with rewards like weekly leaderboards, where the top 10 get discounts on guild merchants. Want to help your guild, but you don't want to just donate money? Get some guildies together and go clear the weekly HM dungeons to get a leaderboard spot.

HEIIMS wrote: »

GloatingSwine wrote: »

Reward skins are just bragging rights, they aren't the gateway to being able to do anything within the game.

And that's the correct reward for things like hard modes. Bragging rights and cosmetics you can show off with.

This tbh. The very endgame already lacks any tangible rewards (I mean score pushing) more rewards related to leaderboards would be a welcome change. And as you said, it could be something very small and cosmetic, maybe little wings over your nameplate to show everyone you hold the highest score in particular trial for that patch or something of the sort. Mounts and titles for trial trifectas are good addition already, I wish they'd update older trials with this change as well. Something more for dungeon trifecta's would be nice as well, afaik players asked for ages for actual "Mountaingod" title etc. It's a very healthy way to encourage this type of content without providing any real advantage so more casual crowd don't feel left out.

I wouldn’t hold your breath on older trials. They still haven’t added the ability to pull a player into a boss fight on Crag trials after disconnecting or the ability to turn the HM challenge off for newer groups attempting the HM for the first time that want to decrease the difficulty to get a clear.

Reading through this thread I think the core of why a lot of endgame players are moving on to other things is missed. There are of course changes in numbers, some low and some high, but the key root cause is that combat is changing from high APM complex dynamic rotations (to generate high damage output) to something simpler. In some eyes that is a positive, but it also removes the key game aspect many in the endgame community loved about ESO. If this is ultimately good or bad depends on how ZoS will continue to do as a business. I am not casting judgement on the changes, just mentioning what I hear day after day.

Ph1p wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

I think a better solution would be to make end-game requirements (in things like hard-mode and trifectas) less strict.

I agree that ZOS should not balance new trial hard modes and trifectas based on the utmost top end of the spectrum, which represents maybe a few thousand or even just some hundreds of players globally. However, the suggestion in your original post, which sounded a lot like getting rid of them and having regular veteran as the highest accomplishment, did not resonate.

code65536 wrote an excellent post about exactly this issue - the combination of a large power gab, with only a tiny number of people at the top end, and new endgame content being balanced towards that high end. Well articulated and a good read!

This.

The problem is not that the hard modes exist. Removing the extra challenge level would be awful for ESO or any generic game with multiple challenge levels. The problem is that the combat team is trying to lower the ceiling while the content team is simultaneously designing hard modes for the absolute edge of the ceiling, making it so that content once within reach for some will no longer be reachable.

If the content designers targeted hard modes assuming the teams completing them are, say, 85% or 90% functional instead of designing them for basically zero room for error, we would be in a better place. But removing the modes is not the answer. The main reason I log in is to work towards obtaining those, at least for dungeons. I like the challenge.

Oh, and I want to answer the sledgehammer question. In my opinion, a sledgehammer adjustment is when whole playstyles are decimated for the sake of the change.

To use my biggest issue with this game as an example, removing the only way we had in game to track per character completions of hard modes, trifectas, etc. was a sledgehammer move that decimated completely the way I played the game. Allowing those challenges to remain per-character, while changing grindy achievements that require time but no skill (like monster achievements) to be per account, and ensuring any achievement rewards both rolled up across characters and were account-wide would have been a scalpel approach. Folks would only HAVE to do the achievements once, if they disliked doing them, and the rewards would be accessible, while people like me who enjoyed the challenge of trying no death on a tank, and then a healer, and then a DPS, wouldn't have lost that capability. And the database size would still have been reduced by a large amount.

When a combat adjustment is so disruptive that people abandon a class or playstyle because it can no longer be acceptably competitive without completely re-doing what made the build fun in the first place, to me that's a sledgehammer. Slightly adjusting the damage of an ability because it is overperforming, but not to the point that it HAS to be swapped out for something else, is a scalpel.